The Inner Lamp

bySean

We are in this miracle thing together. I forget that a lot and I know that you forget it sometimes too. And even when I remember I can be churlish about it. I’m in it for me! I long for happiness and peace as if they are slices of a pie that you and I and every other body on the planet has to find a way to share. And I’m not good at sharing. Or not always anyway.

What is that problem – that unwillingness to accept you as a fellow traveler, fellow student, brother or sister, as Christ – but a symptom that love in me is blocked? All A Course in Miracles can do for us is help undo those blocks. There is really nothing else to do. Our lives – as complex and appealing as they seem – are simply learning opportunities. And there is only one lesson: we aren’t separated from God. We think we are – we act like we are – but it’s not true. The course quietly reconnects us to what is true – eternal and unchanging truth.

Truth does not vacillate; it is always true (T-9.VIII.7:2).

That fact is the basis of the Holy Spirit’s essential lesson, ever at the root of the course’s teaching.

The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one (T-14.II.2:1-2).

And we cannot figure this out – we cannot see it – without one another. The course does not equivocate on this point. Awakening is not a solo venture. We get there together – hand in hand – or we don’t get there at all. It’s not a choice we make. It’s not a decision to say, okay, I guess it’s more fun to wake up in concert rather than alone. It’s the truth: unless and until we see Christ in each other – not as an idea but as a fact – then we’re spinning our wheels.

The material scribed around Easter – The Vision of Holiness, for example – is very articulate and poetic on this point. With regards to Heaven, the text asks us to consider how we are going to get there.

Would you not have your holy brother lead you there? His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him where you laid the lilies of forgiveness. Let him be to you the savior from illusions, and look on him with the new visions that looks upon the lilies and brings you joy. We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other’s way (T-20.II.9:1-4).

I need you! But it’s a two way street, right? Because you need me as well. We are brother and sister to each other and our devotion to forgiveness – to ending the apparent separation – unites us and ultimately enables us to push aside the final veils to behold Christ. So we do the lessons and we study the text and we reach out to one another. We share what we are learning. We extend the love that little by little is lit up within us.

Long ago, Jesus questioned the wisdom of lighting a lamp and then hiding it under a basket. We are not here to obscure the truth. We are not here to hoard insight and jealously pursue some projected ideal of Heaven. We are here to learn. We are here to share. We are to here to share the way a while – holding one another up, pointing the way forward, keeping the light where it rays are most helpful.

The lamp is lit in you for your brother. And by the hands that gave it to him shall you be led past fear to love (T-20.II.11:6-7).